U.S. retail forex balances fell 7%. Two firms still held 71% of the market

The amount reported in United States retail foreign-exchange accounts fell 7.2% in the year to August 2026, but the market remained highly concentrated. Six registered entities reported a combined $469.96 million of retail forex obligations, down from $506.58 million a year earlier. GAIN Capital and OANDA alone still accounted for 71.4% of the total. The decline was not universal. GAIN, OANDA, Charles Schwab Futures and Forex and Interactive Brokers reported lower obligations, while Tastyfx and Trading.com Markets reported increases. Tastyfx grew 13.3%, enough to move its share of the six-firm total from 8.6% to 10.4%. Trading.com grew 11.5% but remained below 1% of the total. The figures are regulatory point-in-time balances, not revenue or trading volume. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission defines a retail forex obligation as the combined money, securities and property deposited into retail forex accounts, adjusted for realised and unrealised net profit or loss.[1][2][3]

The reporting universe was unchanged at six entities with non-zero obligations across the two comparison dates. No seventh firm entered with a positive balance, and no included firm disappeared. That makes the year-on-year total internally consistent, while still leaving legal-entity and product migrations inside each firm unresolved.[1][2]

A smaller pool did not become a less concentrated one

GAIN’s obligation fell by $13.51 million and OANDA’s by $17.07 million. Together, their combined balance declined from $366.11 million to $335.54 million. Yet their market share moved only from 72.3% to 71.4% because the total pool also contracted. FXBrokers.ai calculated a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index from the six reported balances. The index moved from about 2,968 to 2,952 on the zero-to-10,000 scale—a marginal reduction. The calculation is descriptive, not an antitrust market definition. It treats the CFTC’s six reporting entities as the entire measured universe and weights only obligations, not customer numbers, trading volume, spreads or revenue. The result is still informative: the shift toward Tastyfx was visible, but it did not materially alter the dominance of the two largest balances. GAIN alone represented 43.4% of the August 2026 total and OANDA 28.0%. The next two firms together represented 22.3%.[1][2][3]

The total fell by $36.6 million

OANDA contributed the largest absolute decline, followed by GAIN. Interactive Brokers’ balance fell by $6.76 million, Schwab’s by $5.34 million, while Tastyfx added $5.77 million and Trading.com added $0.29 million. The net movement was a reduction of $36.61 million. Those changes cannot be translated directly into customer gains or losses. An obligation can move because clients deposit or withdraw cash, because open positions gain or lose value, because the number of active accounts changes, or because customers move between products or legal entities. A broker can also grow trading volume while balances fall if customers turn over capital more rapidly. The data are reported as of one date each year. They do not reveal intra-month peaks, average balances or the duration of deposits. Nor do they include offshore entities serving non-U.S. customers. The comparison therefore describes the U.S. registered retail forex perimeter at two snapshots, not the global retail FX industry.[1][2][3]

Capital ratios vary wildly because the businesses are not comparable

The same CFTC table reports adjusted net capital, minimum requirements and excess net capital. Dividing excess net capital by retail forex obligations produces strikingly different ratios: about 2.2% for OANDA, 23.9% for GAIN, 93.4% for Tastyfx, 127.2% for Trading.com, 451.0% for Schwab and more than 33,000% for Interactive Brokers. Those percentages are not a ranking of customer protection. Excess net capital is firm-wide regulatory capital above the entity’s minimum requirement. It is not a segregated reserve dedicated dollar-for-dollar to retail forex customers. Multi-business FCMs such as Interactive Brokers and Schwab hold capital against activities far beyond retail FX, so the denominator mismatch is especially large. OANDA’s August 2026 adjusted net capital was $29.59 million against a $26.72 million requirement, leaving $2.86 million of excess. Its excess was therefore about 10.7% above the requirement and 2.2% of reported retail forex obligations. That proves it remained above the reported regulatory minimum at the snapshot; it does not prove a 2.2% loss buffer for customers, because obligations and capital serve different legal and accounting functions. GAIN’s excess net capital was $48.72 million against $204.16 million of retail forex obligations. Tastyfx’s was $45.86 million against $49.09 million of obligations. The proximity of those numbers at Tastyfx is coincidental unless the company or regulator identifies a direct capital-allocation link.[1][2][3]

Obligations are not the same as protected deposits

The CFTC’s definition combines money, securities and property in retail forex accounts with realised and unrealised profit or loss. It does not say that every dollar is held as cash, insured by a deposit-protection scheme or segregated under the futures customer rules. Retail forex regulation imposes capital, disclosure, recordkeeping and business-conduct requirements, but the precise treatment of customer funds depends on the entity and product. Readers should not import the segregation columns for exchange-traded futures into the retail forex column. The monthly table itself presents them as separate measures. This distinction is important when comparing firms that are registered in more than one capacity. GAIN is listed as an FCM and retail foreign exchange dealer; OANDA and Trading.com as FCM/RFED entities; Tastyfx as an RFED; and Interactive Brokers and Schwab as FCMs with retail forex obligations. Their wider businesses and legal structures differ. A balance ranking therefore answers only one question: how much retail forex obligation each reporting entity recorded at that date. It does not rank execution quality, creditworthiness, profitability, number of customers or the safety of a particular account.[1][2][3]

What would explain the contraction

What concentration does not say about customer protection

A falling aggregate retail-FX balance and rising concentration among the largest firms can occur simultaneously without proving a decline in the number of customers or the quality of execution. Regulatory reports measure specified funds held by reporting retail foreign-exchange dealers under a particular definition, not every American trader’s assets at every offshore or securities-based platform. The total can move because customers withdraw, move positions, change collateral use or redistribute balances among providers. The two largest firms’ share is a distributional statistic within the regulated reporting universe.[1][2]

The next meaningful test is a time-series of both the aggregate balance and each firm’s share, paired with a careful definition of any mergers, licence changes or reporting additions. If the denominator changes, a percentage share can move without a single customer transferring money. If the population is stable, sustained concentration may matter to market competition and operational dependencies, but the source numbers alone do not establish unfair pricing or customer harm.[1][2]

The most useful next evidence would be a bridge from opening to closing obligations: net customer deposits, withdrawals, trading profit and loss, account transfers and any product migration. The CFTC dataset does not publish that bridge. FXBrokers.ai would ask GAIN and OANDA whether the declines reflected customer withdrawals, lower open-position values, changes in account activity or transfers within their corporate groups. Tastyfx and Trading.com should be asked what drove their increases and whether the balances persisted beyond August. Schwab and Interactive Brokers should be asked whether product or account migrations affected the U.S. retail forex line. No adverse inference follows from a lower balance. Customers withdrawing profitable funds, a deliberate reduction in inactive cash or movement to exchange-traded products could all reduce obligations without weakening a franchise. Conversely, a higher balance does not necessarily mean more customers or better execution. The defensible market-level finding is that the measured U.S. retail forex pool contracted by 7.2% while concentration barely changed. Two firms still held more than seven-tenths of the reported obligations, and the capital columns cannot be converted into a simple league table of protection.[1][2][3]

FXBrokers.ai reproduced the calculations from the CFTC’s unrounded dollar fields, included every entity with a non-zero retail forex obligation in either August dataset, and kept the reporting perimeter constant. Percentages may differ slightly from calculations made with rounded millions. The analysis does not combine affiliates or infer balances for firms that reported zero.[1][2][3]

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